Porges is my husband's absolute favorite, but my father is a Chiffon's fan from his childhood. Zomick's is what I consider my crappy, guilty-pleasure challah. It's so good but nowhere near the quality of the real bakeries. I'm so glad you wrote about these great Jewish, Brooklyn-based bakeries!

Go to Pomegranate, an all kosher "high-end" store. They have almost everything you can find kosher and great (and expensive) meat, cheese and specialty produce items. And all the foods made on premises are fantastic and always fresh.

Thanks for all the suggestions, although the comments saying that it's not as good as it used to be is a little disheartening. I'm thinking of going with some chocolate pudding and/or chocolate chip cookies. Still don't know what to do with my cocoa powder, but I'm sure I'll find some good uses :)
@cmtigger, I bought a bar of 62% cacoa and cocoa powder.

This is basically the same problem with eating kosher. I could make that recipe, but wait there's bacon in it, or wait there's chicken stock or just a teeny slice of cheese etc. etc. It's always that one small thing that makes it inedible to those following a strict diet. Mostly every recipe that I read that is not designed to be kosher has conflicting ingredients for my diet and I'm always finding new ways to reinvent things to become kosher.

It's my husband's birthday in two weeks (April 24) and I really want to make him a really nice picnic in somewhere beautiful in NYC. Cute wicker basket, *real* plates and forks, champagne and glasses etc. Any ideas where I could do this? It would also be around 6ish. And of course menu suggestions would be incredibly helpful!

I went to my local grocery store and was seriously surprised to find Scharffen Berger chocolate. I've never used it and have never even tried it and decided to splurge on it for something special. Any ideas on what that something special should be? My first thought was to make truffles, but I want to use the chocolate to make something good, excellent. Any ideas?